Local artists head to Halle 14, Germany

Hospitalfield Arts works with Halle 14, Leipzig to send 3 Scottish artists to Germany for residencies within the renowned art centre.

The project represents a new venture between HALLE 14 – centre for contemporary art in Leipzig, Germany and Hospitalfield Arts in Arbroath, UK. It is supported by the British Council and Creative Scotland as part of the Creative Futures in Germany programme. You can find out more about this international project here. The three residencies will happen between March and August this year.

The residencies are a significant opportunity for the artists selected and are designed to have an impact on their longer term connections in Germany as well as on the development of their studio practice.

Over the next few months, Delia Bailie and Valerie Norris will each undertake a two-month residency at HALLE 14 and Mick Peter will stay for one month. The programme will comprise residency within HALLE 14’s bespoke studio and workshop provision; peer to peer learning opportunities arranged with other studio holders at HALLE 14; curatorial mentoring from Hospitalfield Arts and HALLE 14 staff tailored to their specific practice; and introductions to gallerists and curators both through visits to galleries and through curators’ studio visits. During the programme each artist will also present an artists’ talk event and take part in an open studio event at HALLE 14.

Hospitalfield Arts is initiating this project because of an aspiration to facilitate significant opportunities for artists from Scotland. HALLE 14 is initiating this project to enable international artists to have an intense and well-focused work phase in Leipzig, to be inspired by new subjects and by the city of Leipzig as a diverse place for research, as well as simultaneously bring to the city new impulses for artistic diversity.

Both organisations are committed to developing an ongoing relationship in order to share expertise and develop opportunities for artists. More on the artists:

Delia Baillie makes paintings using the relationship between layered and collaged elements and the application and manipulation of pigment, paint and mediums as a means of exploring how society deals with the invisible aspects of human existence and the collision of external and internal experience. The resulting paintings aim to generate the illusion of a time and space that offers equilibrium between order and the unexpected. She also makes projects with other artists including The Hospital for Dazed Art, a series of conversations and informal surgeries initiated by Iain Sturrock and Delia Baillie that explores why artists (secretly) retain certain works in their studios for years at a time without publically showing / recycling / or trashing them, and what this means in terms of editorial integrity. This project resulted in an exhibition at The Briggait, Glasgow in early 2014.

Valerie Norris’ practice investigates concepts of collage and fragmentation as a means of exploring the counterpoint between reality and imagination; nature and artifice; and contemplation of the transformative potential of objects and everyday detritus. The work evolves from the collection of found images, objects and text from magazines, charity shops, film, fashion, music, nature, literature and poetry. The works explore expanded notions of painting, often incorporating objects and a mise-en-scène format of presentation. Layers of meaning are created through the interplay between painting, objects, form, colour, image and text; and in the way that this accumulates to form a visual language. Informed by an assemblage of references including Cubism, Constructivism, Dada and Surrealism, chance associations and narratives are proposed through a process of arrangement and play.

Sculptor Mick Peter transforms imagery from fiction, illustration and graphic design into playful installations; liberating images from the flat surface of the page, to create witty and exuberant sculptures. Sketches and squiggles are transformed in scale and remade in substantial materials such as concrete, acrylic resin and polyurethane. The resulting sculptures, despite their robustness, have an uneasy feeling about them, as though they are not yet entirely complete.